DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Why not give empty seats to the real fans?

With dazzling technical wizardry, quirky humour and sheer exuberance, Danny Boyle’s opening ceremony lifted the nation’s spirits and emphatically banished any lingering doubts that the Olympics would be a roaring success.

Angelic choirboys, edgy urban dancers, Beatle impersonators and trampolining NHS patients came together in a riot of sound and vision.

When even the Queen was prepared to abandon protocol and join the fun by playing a cameo role in a James Bond spoof, we knew we were witnessing something truly extraordinary.

Pride of a nation: 23-year-old swimmer Rebecca Adlington brought home a bronze medal in the 400m freestyle, to the delight of her coach

Although some may have felt Mr Boyle’s portrayal of British history veered towards the politically correct, the vast majority watched the show transfixed.

An astonishing 27million tuned in – the biggest TV audience for more than 25 years – and that enthusiasm swept through the weekend, when a million smiling, cheering, flag-waving spectators flocked to the Surrey countryside to watch the cycling road race whizz by.

Very few knew much about what was going on but no one cared. It was enough to be there and be part of the spectacle.

Yesterday, the fans had something concrete to celebrate, with cyclist Lizzie Armitstead and swimmer Rebecca Adlington winning Britain’s first medals.

It is precisely because the Games have started so well and everyone is so desperate to be involved, that the swathes of empty seats visible at several venues so far have been such a disappointment.

Sparsely populated: Allowing fans to fill empty seats would end scenes like this at the Aquatic Centre

These gaps – mainly seats reserved for guests of corporate sponsors, officials, media and competitors’ families – are a slap in the face to the millions of people who applied for tickets without success.

To add insult to injury, hundreds more tickets allocated abroad are being brazenly offered for sale by touts outside the Olympic Park, a situation the police must crack down on without mercy.

London 2012 chairman Lord Coe, who has staged the Games brilliantly so far, is now considering allowing soldiers, teachers and students to fill vacant seats. But shouldn’t he go further?

Every day there are countless people without tickets around the stadium. Why not just let some of them in?

On its website, the organising committee says these Olympics will be ‘the most inclusive ever’. What could be more inclusive than opening the doors to thousands more ordinary fans?

A stain on the NHS

Mrs Pertoldi was put on a nil-by-mouth regime when she was admitted (picture posed by model)

While there is undoubtedly much that is still good about the NHS, the appalling death in hospital of active grandmother Joan Pertoldi following a routine hip operation starkly reminds us there is also much that is shockingly bad.

Dehydrated after being on a nil-by-mouth regime for a week because her operation was postponed several times, she developed a urine infection, then blood-poisoning, then the superbug infection that killed her.

Sadly, this is no isolated case. Latest figures show an average of four people die in hospital a day from hunger or thirst.

So instead of constantly bleating about Government reforms, isn’t it high time NHS managers and nursing unions focused their attention on tackling these catastrophic – and wholly preventable – failures in basic care?

Sickness in the system

Some doctors complain that the Government’s instruction to reassess the health of 1.5million incapacity benefit claimants pressurises them into declaring sick people fit for work.

The fact that 885,000 have been off for over a decade with complaints ranging from coughs and bad backs to acne, suggests that for too long they have been doing exactly the opposite.